GOOD RESULT: Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service Board chair Peta Jamieson and executive director of acute hospital and community services Debbie Carroll at the recent opening of a new 20-bed ward at Bundaberg Hospital.Toni Benson-Rogan

Health

Report reveals standards of hospital care

Crystal JonesCrystal Jones is a senior journalist and editor at the Bundaberg NewsMail. She has worked extensively in regional Queensland news since 2007 and has tackled big issues including the extensive abuse in the aged care industry.

THE Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service's most recent Quality of Care Report has shed a light on health in our region and the vital signs are looking good.

The WBHHS has met all core national standards of care consistently.

Among the highlights of the 2017-18 report are significant reductions in pressure injuries, healthcare-associated infections and hospital-standardised mortality ratios - which is a comparison between the expected in-hospital deaths and the actual number of deaths, based on the patient population characteristics.

"When it comes to important patient safety indicators such as pressure injury incidents and healthcare-associated infections, not only are our teams well within Queensland Health benchmarks, but continue to exceed our own, more ambitious, targets each year," Wide Bay Hospital and Health Board chair Peta Jamieson said.

"That means patients can have great confidence in the care they receive from WBHHS clinicians and staff each and every day."

Compliments submitted to the hospital service in the 2017-18 period outnumbered complaints by more than double and 100 per cent were addressed within the five-day target.

Of the received complaints, the highest numbers were for access and timing, treatment and caring.

The 2017-18 report also sheds light on the region's parents' outlook on vaccinating their children.

Wide Bay parents are not only smashing the Queensland Health vaccination benchmark of 90 per cent, but consistently beating it.

The report credits the high vaccination rate for the low rate of vaccine-preventable diseases in the region.

WBBHS data shows that the percentage of ambulance patients being placed into the care of medical staff within 30 minutes has been dropping with 91 per cent in 2015-16, 90 per cent in 2016-17 and 86 per cent in the 2017-18 report.

The Queensland Health benchmark is 90 per cent.

The report cites a 3 per cent increase in presentations as a contributing factor as well as being a "consequence in part" of an 8 per cent increase in patients needing to be admitted.

Twenty additional beds, added to Bundaberg Hospital this year, are part of the plan to address the shortfall.

Triage waiting times for the Category 1 patients (the most urgent) were 100 per cent seen within two minutes.

For Category 2 patients, 81 per cent were seen within 10 minutes, one per cent above the benchmark.

Category 3 and 4 patients were slightly below their targets, while 87 per cent of Caregory 5 patients were seen within 120 minutes - a 17 per cent improvement on the benchmark.